Thursday, 18 April 2024

Day 56 - On the Salt Flats at Uyuni

This day was planned for a tour out onto the Salt Flats in a 4WD.

They came to collect us all with two Toyota Landcruisers of reasonable vintage and driven to a number of stops. The places we were to visit we listed to us, but changed at least four times during the tour which was great fun and very interesting but way too long. 

The first stop was at the train graveyard. Here there are many British built trains from the 19th Century that used to carry ore out to the coast and via Chile for the Bolivian Government, and bring general goods and supplies back to Bolivia. The trainline was built between about 1850 and 1879. We are told that there are modern trains that still do this but from another place, however we have never seen them. In addition, the two wars between Bolivia and neighbouring countries including Paraguay and Argentina.

The we drove about 10 km to the edge of the huge salt flats. At one point, I asked the driver how far away a very visible mountain was? I thought about 7km, he said 50km but google maps said 84km.

We then drove onto the flats and changed our locations multiple times, including the Dakar Memorial, a hotel, the reflection pools and a park with sculptures where we could take silly photographs which we did.







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